SOURCE: "The Burlesque Sonnets of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz," in Hispanic Journal, Vol. 8, No. 1, Fall, 1986, pp. 85-95.

In the following essay, Luciani places Juans Inés de la Cruz's burlesque sonnets within the context of the courtly love tradition.

In his controversial psychoanalytic study of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Ludwig Pfandl offers her five burlesque sonnets as proof that the Mexican nun suffered from a chronic mental disorder, because of which she sometimes slipped into an abnormal and indecent deficiency of sensibility and taste. Says Pfandl [in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, la décima musa de México: Su vida, Su poesia, Su psique, translated by Juan Autonio Ortega y Medina, 1963]:

Por último podemos también aqui mencionar esos cinco malos sonetos que los biógrafos de nuestra monja no saben precisamente como justificar y declarar inofensivos y tampoco...